Tracking your finances with plain text accounting Plain Numbers

If you're tired of tinkering with spreadsheets, using hledger and plain text accounting offers a simpler method for managing your finances without vendor lock-in

- Marco Fioretti

Accounting or bookkeeping may look like black magic to nonprofessionals, but its most basic forms are less obscure than you might think. A good accounting system can save money, trouble, and time – even if you are just trying to get your personal finances under control. In this tutorial, I will explain a simple accounting technique, plain text accounting (PTA), and introduce you to hledger, one of the most popular open source PTA tools.

What Is PTA?

In double-entry accounting, every change in the state of the system is a dated movement of money (or whatever else is being accounted for) between at least one source and one destination, and the sum of all those movements equals zero. Double-entry accounting has been around for centuries because its “balanced” transactions are a great, self-enforcing, easy-to-code way to guarantee that no money ever enters or leaves the system unexplained. In double-entry accounting, money is usually inside three main types of accounts: assets (what you own), liabilities (what you owe), and equity, plus two other categories devoted to revenues and expenses. Each account can be subdivided in multiple levels of sub-accounts according to your needs.